June 8, 2025 • 42 mins
TikTok star "Grump Old Gay" joins me, Brad Polumbo, for a conversation about Pride Month and how it's changed/declined over the years. Plus, we talk about young "queer" posers like JoJo Siwa, the shallow emphasis placed on "diversity," and so much more.
Check out his TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@thegrumpyoldgay
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You can look at the first Pride March.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
So you many puppy masks and leather don daddies were there.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
None, You did not see anything. Of what people are
saying was always part of what about.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
How many black trans women were leading the charge joining
me to talk all things Pride Month. We have Tim
aka the Grumpy Old Gay.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Thanks for having me. It's been a while.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, it's been a while. We chatted before and people
really enjoyed that episode. It got a lot of engagement
in fews. But uh, I wanted to talk to you
again because I saw a TikTok of yours about Pride
Month that I'll insert a little snippet from.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Grumpy Old gayrant of the day. There are LGBT people
all over this app saying, you know what, it is,
Pride Month. But I'm not going to go to any
of the Pride festivals. I am one of them. It's
just not for me. Don't get me wrong. In my
early twenties, I used to go to Pride every year
because it focused on something different.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So for me, I've been a pretty big critic of
Pride Month since kind of my adult political In maybe
twenty nineteen, I went to a couple At the very beginning,
I pretty soon couldn't really go to any because I
was kind of persona on grata in the DC gay community.
But I hated how hyper sexualized they were, Like I'm
(01:14):
not really a kink shamer or anything like that, but
I didn't appreciate it being conflated with just being gay
and being such a big part of it all, and
especially given that there were kids at a lot of
the events. And then I really resented the extent to
which Pride at these official parades was just lumped in
with a bunch of other random left wing causes like
(01:35):
climate change, abortion, guns, and whatever your opinion is on
all of those. I think, Okay, we can have a conversation.
I respect the difference of opinion, but don't conflate being
gay with just like a whole democratic agenda, or you're
going to make it something politicized and partisan. But what
I'm really curious is it sounds like you've observed a
(01:56):
big change in what Pride month and what Pride events
look like over time. Tell us what did it used
to be?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Like? Okay, so my first call you old no, no, no.
I embraced my age. I'm looking forward. I turned fifty
this year to be a golden gay, so I'm embracing
my age. My first pride I will never forget. I
call him my fairy god Homo. He I met when
I was in college. She was one of my pharmacy patients.
(02:23):
He had full blown AIDS. He and his partner both
had AIDS. And I was looking to get into graduate
school and they got me involved in something called the
West Palm Beach Comprehensive AIDS Project. So I was looking
for volunteer hours and I worked in the pantry volunteering
for AIDS patients, and they took me to my first
pride because I was working the booth. And back then
(02:48):
it was different. It was political, but we were fighting
for something that I think that were kind of lost
track of or sight of. Back then, we were fighting
or our best friend's lives. I was fighting for my
best friend's life. I mean, he had no t cells.
He was dying. I was watching my best friend die
(03:08):
in front of me. So we were fighting for something
different than we were fighting to make sure we didn't
get fired from our jobs because of who we were.
We didn't really have any federal protections when it came
to the workplace, and it was more of bringing awareness
to the people that you know, just so happened to
(03:29):
be gay. It wasn't like an identity back then. And
I was very very active in the gay community in
Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in Orlando, even in
Colorado when I was going to college there, and then
when I don't know, I want to say, in the
last ten twelve years, I saw a shift in what
(03:52):
was happening in pride, and I wasn't exactly proud of
what I was seeing. I'm like you, I'm not shaming
any buddy, I just didn't feel comfortable. Like you said,
I saw kids coming to pride, and in small town
pride events like Fort Collins, Colorado, where we had Pride,
it was more of just a celebration of everybody. You
(04:15):
didn't have to be gay, you didn't have to be
trans or anything like that. It was family friendly. But
in the bigger cities it does seem like there was
a shift more to sexualize things, and as an educator,
I didn't feel comfortable in that environment having kids around it.
And I don't understand why that shift occurred. And I
get a lot of pushback from people because I'm not
(04:37):
a gay historian. I like to read. I've always wondered
things and I investigated on my own, and a common
response I was constantly getting was it's always been this way,
and I'm like, has it because I don't remember it
this way? No, So I didn't know that. You can
look at the first Pride March, which was the Christopher
(04:58):
Street Gay Liberal March in June of nineteen seventy. The
entire march used to be available on YouTube, so you
can puppy.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Masks and leather dom daddies were there.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
None, You did not see anything of what people are
saying was always part.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Of what about how many black trans women were leading
the charge?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That's the weird thing. Marcia P. Johnson was there and
they've romanticized her, and I have nothing against the woman,
but it was another thing when it comes to Pride.
I was always told I have to thank Marsha P. Johnson,
and I'm like, okay, cool, what did she do? I
want to learn? So the more I read about her,
and the more people would tell me, I'm like, that's great,
(05:42):
she was an activist, but what did she do? And
they're like, what you were.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
The first brick. They said it a bunch of times,
so it must be true. Tim.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
They even made a shirt, and I'm just like.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Wow, it's not historically true, like she showed up after
it had started. And I guess even whether Marsha P.
Johnson counts as a tree black trans woman is somewhat
dubious because that term didn't really exist. Marcia was a
drag queen. But say that, say you accept that framing
that Marsha was a trans woman. Okay, it's one person
(06:12):
who was somewhat involved in the events of Stonewall. But
this like mythological rewriting of things where Stonewall was started
and led by black trans women of color, is just
like ingrained in a certain segment of the population's consciousness,
but isn't true. And I don't know how that.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Happened because this is my own. First of all, I
don't hate anyone. I'm not a bigot, but I do
like to understand the whole picture and hear the whole story.
And I think, because I will admit as a white
gay cisnle that black, brown trans people have been marginalized
(06:57):
in our group. And I think that they chose her
as a messiah to help say. I think it was
to more include people that were being either disenfranchised or
just being excluded from the group, and in an effort
to include them, they made her the figurehead to say, well,
(07:18):
you owe everything to this. And I have nothing against
Marsha P. Johnson, But when I ask people that shove
that down my throat, I'm like, well, what about Stormy?
And they're like who? And I go, oh, you don't
know who Stormy LeVar. I never can say her last name, right, Laverier.
They don't even know who that is. And I'm like, okay,
(07:39):
and what about Raymond Castro? Who's that? I'm like, these
were the people that were actually in Stonewall during the raid.
These are the people. Stormy is the one who yelled
to the crowd when she was getting pulled out. Why
are you letting them do this? That sense chills down
my spine every time I tell that story, because she's
the one who really kicked it off, and she is
(08:02):
a woman of color, she is gender non conforming. You're
completely you want to talk about misogyny, you're completely discounting
the actual person that kind of started the Stonewall movement
and you're also being disrespectful to every advocate or activist.
Is the word I'm looking for that came before them,
(08:23):
the Black Cat, Tavern riot, the Patch Bar. All of
these people were so brave in what they did, saying
we're not going to take this anymore. You're not going
to marginalize this. We're just people, and just to discount
everything in front of them and to put everything into
Marsha P. Johnson in the name of inclusivity. I want
(08:44):
everybody to be included.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Not at the expense of truth. I shouldn't have to
come at the expense of truth. But I derailed you
a little bit. And I want to talk more about this,
about how you've seen pride change over time, over the decades,
in recent years, how has it changed, Because my window
into it is not even a decade long, so I
haven't seen it change a whole lot. I think I've
only known kind of the modern iteration. In my personal experience, we.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Will say smaller town pride I enjoyed immensely because it
was more about community and it was more about gay
owned businesses. LGBT owned businesses would come and have booths,
and again we were watching our friends die we knew
that we were being discriminated against, and the purpose was
(09:29):
to show which as horrible as this sounds, because when
you say this, now you're called to pick me. You
were supposed to just be there to say, hey, I'm
just like you. I just so happened to be gay.
And then it is transitioned into something that is I
am gay, pay attention to me, or I am trans
pay attention to me, and it got hijacked from what
(09:49):
the original purpose was in my opinion, and I just.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I mean, it's funny that you say they'll call that
like pick me or whatever, but that's kind of the
point of activism actually is to get society to like
you and agree with you. I mean, we live in
a democratic society where you have to convince the public
to if you want rights for your group, well you
have to convince a majority of people that your group
(10:14):
deserves rights. And so they're like, well, that's just respectability politics,
and I'm like, yes, it is, Yeah, that is my point. Correct,
you're finally getting it. But they act like that's some
kind of dirty word, as if they have the right.
And maybe they have this right, but it's just not
realistic to be as transgressive as imaginable, do as much
(10:34):
as they can to do things or present themselves in
ways that are distasteful to the public. But then the
public still has to accept them and give them, grant
them every right that they want in society. It's just
not like going to happen. Maybe you should say, you know, well,
people's basic rights shouldn't be a popularity contest. I agree,
but like welcome to democracy, I don't know what more
(10:56):
to tell them.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
The other thing, though, because we have two different demographics,
I feel like that are pulling Pride away from what
it used to be. One is the overt sexualization of everything.
And you still have the right to do those things
in the privacy of your own home. And that's what
(11:17):
I think people forget. For some reason, common sense and
morality or lack thereof, just seems to go out the
window when it comes to a Pride celebration. You would
not allow that in a July fourth parade. You would
not allow that in any a Saint Patrick's parade. It's
as drunken as that is. You wouldn't tolerate that. So
(11:38):
what is it about Pride where you feel the need
to do those things in public. I have friends that
are in that community and they talk about folsom Street,
and I always say, even that, I understand that it's
more guarded, but what you do in the privacy of
(11:59):
your their own home, that's what the original fight was,
I thought was.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Or even in a public setting, that's just not conflated
with LGBT. So, like, one of the criticisms that I
made in years past was in DC they had a
massive LGBT kink and leather conference, and I'm like, why
can't you just have a kink and leather conference and
have straight and heterosexual people there. Why do you have
(12:26):
to make this a gay thing when the whole point
is that being gay is not a kink, it's not
a preference, and it's not you know, something actually that's
deviant or outside the norm in terms of beyond the
pale in society. I just feel it's very counterproductive to
conflate that with these kinds of things that really have
nothing to do with sexuality. But I think they want
(12:47):
to conflate it because they want, like I don't know,
recognition or support for their kinks and stuff. They're not
content to just keep it private. I'm not sure why
maybe it's part of it, and so they're trying to
hijack the broad acceptance that gay rights has enjoyed until
maybe it still mostly is, but until recently we've seen
it start to slip a little bit in the polling
and stuff. And I'm like, but no, you don't seem
(13:09):
to realize you're not going to capitalize on that increase
in support. You're going to drag it down with you.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
We don't want that, don't I agree? And the thing is,
I honestly, and this is where I'm hoping that we
don't get you in trouble on YouTube. I don't understand
this need people have to be oppressed. It's like they're
they're looking for a reason, and they're creating reasons for
(13:36):
people to discriminate against them or oppress them in some way,
shape or form. And you doing overtly sexual things in
public in the name of pride, and then when people
call you out then you're like, oh, I'm playing the victim.
I'm like, you're not the victim. You were the catalyst
(13:58):
for this. And I hate the fact that it seems
like we were on this great trajectory where everybody knew
someone who was LGBT, and everybody was supportive in the
fact that they were like, it's your life. Even my
family members they're from Florida, they're a Republican. They were like,
we support you because you were you. But we're losing
(14:21):
that support because we're getting hijacked. I mean, quite frankly,
the movement has been hijacked and we're going off into
a path where the name of inclusivity now you are
excluded if you are not falling in line with the
rest of the I'm sorry to call it. It seems
like a cult.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And what about the second group? Because you talked about
the kink and the sexual stuff. What's the second group
you identified that's changed how pride is okay?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So it is to me the well meaning but slightly
off kilter people that are claiming that trans or non
binary who are not actually trans a non binary. I
got so much hate a year ago from a TikTok
I made where I was not making fun of trans people,
(15:13):
I was not making fun of non binary people. I
was making fun of straight heterosexual couples that are claiming
that they are queer or non binary in an effort
to I don't know, seem oppressed or seem included, or
seem edgy, I don't know, and that TikTok got so
taken out of context. I was called phobe, and I'm like,
(15:35):
I'm not phobic. You missed the point. I wasn't making
fun of trans people. I wasn't making fun of non binary.
I was making fun of boring, middle class, white straight
people who are literally just for some reason, I can
be non binary. And I tried to warn, and I'm
kind of sarcastic, and I tried to warn. I said,
(15:56):
the trans community has always been the most fragile member
of members of our community. And I was accused of gatekeeping,
and I said, dear head, damn right, I'm gatekeeping because
there has to be a level of gatekeeping it. Do
not gatekeep it. People will want to do bad things
and use that title to do bad things. And we've
(16:16):
seen it all over TikTok. That person is famous. They
were just at Disney World and they are literally pulling
down the trans community further than what they were and
they've never been that high anyway. They were starting to
gain momentum, but then you have these people that in
my mind are just cost playing or experimenting with gender
(16:37):
and that's fine, but you don't need to appropriate the
label as you're trying to find who your true self is,
and it's coming at a detriment to our most fragile,
vulnerable population. But I was the bigot for calling that out.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I was like, no, you're not, and they just throw
that around like Candia Halloween, which is one of the
reasons it's lost its power. And unfortunately, I think you
are seeing a genuine rye and bigotry and nastiness towards
trans people that I don't support.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
But part of the.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Reason is because they've stretched it so like if trans
doesn't mean anything, if there's no medical basis for it, right,
because there always have been a tiny percent of people
who have severe gender dysphoria, for whom the best thing
for them in life is to transition, and I've always
been supportive of that, though I think they should wait
till they're adults or near the age of adulthood to
make irreversible changes. But the problem is that you have
(17:27):
people claiming that, well, I'm trans non binary, I don't
actually have to do anything. It's just how I feel inside,
and it's valid in my truth I'm sorry, but that's
like not a real thing. There's no scientific basis for that.
Nobody's going to take it seriously. It's not really credible.
It's just kind of like, in my view, almost the
new goth. These people are conflating their gender for just
(17:48):
like their personality or their style or something. And I'm
sure they don't realize they're doing it, but they're almost
delegitimizing the idea of a trans person and them having genderice.
For you in, the thing that makes that worthy of
respect is actually the medical basis of it, because it's
not just something people wake up one day and choose.
It's something they struggle with for years and will cause
(18:10):
them intense, intense distress if they don't transition in some cases.
And when you're conflating that with the fact that, like
you want a nosering and a somewhat gender ambiguous haircut,
it's just it's not the same. And what you're doing
is you're watering down the category and you're stripping it
of the seriousness with which people used to treat it.
(18:31):
And by then and then you're trying to demand that
same level of respecting credibility for something that's frankly, like
not particularly credible or serious. A lot of this oh
my gender is cupcake slash cupcakes self or whatever. Some
of it's attention speaking, it's just the truth. In the
era of TikTok and Instagram and all this, we've made
(18:52):
attention a form of social currency, and we've really valorized victimhood.
We've made this kind of a thing where it's like, well,
how interesting are you? Well, how many groups do you
belong to? How many marginalized identities? And so of course
then you're incentivizing the boring heterosexual white girl to actually
(19:12):
declare herself gender queer and get a nose stud and
now she's dating a man, but it's a queer relationship.
But the byproduct of that, or the end product of
that is then people think it's all a joke, because like,
if it can mean nothing for that person, then doesn't
mean anything for these other people. So there is real harm.
It's not harmless, is I guess what I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Sayings An, I was doing a TikTok live because I
was bored the other day. I rarely go live, and
one of the things someone had brought up was what
were my thoughts on you know, transitioning minors and things
like that, and as someone who has been in education forever,
I can't say what I want to say because I'm
(19:52):
afraid of getting fired, but I'm not at work. Not
everything needs a label, And that's the thing I wish
the younger kids would understand is not everything needs a label.
Everybody goes through in adolescents, even my early twenties, you're
still trying to find out who you are. And I
sit on the fence on this because sometimes I feel
(20:14):
like there's a power in label, like identifying I am gay.
I finally know who I am. But on the other hand,
when you're too busy just grabbing it labels, it has
a detrimental impact. For example, no shade to this person,
Jojo Siwa, she made.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Her entire personal shade a little bit of shade for
me at least, no.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Entire personality about being a lesbian. Mazzle tough, you're a lesbian.
But then now she's completely open about being in this
relationship with a man now, And the first part of
me is like, why why does it matter? I mean, like,
whether you want to be with a man, whether you
want to be with a woman, be who with you
want to be. But the issue is when you're a
public figure like that, or you're popular on social media
(21:02):
and you make a switch like that, it does make
it seem like it's a phase. And as someone who
lived through that experience where my parents made me go
to a therapist and stuff when I came out because
they thought it was a phase, it's insulting for those
of us that lived through it. And I'm not trying
to take away from the younger generation. I'm not trying
to be a bigot. I'm not trying to be phobic.
(21:24):
I'm saying that someone who had to live through Are
you sure it's not a phase? Are you sure it's
not a phase? You're actually reinforcing a common belief when
it comes to the LGBT community that it's a phase
that you'll grow out of. And that's where I have issue.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's the exact point that I was thinking about with this,
because the whole point is not that there's anything wrong
with Jojo Siwah having some sort of journey she's on
where she might at first think she's a lesbian and
then realize, actually, maybe I'm bisexual or maybe I'm heterosexual,
and she ends up dating a man. Absolutely, there's nothing
wrong with that. We've all been into you know, young
(22:02):
and I never really had that struggle, but so be it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
The problem is that, for whatever reason, our celebrity culture,
our social media culture, so incentivizes and celebrates people for
adopting labels and identities. That she was like urged to
come out as a lesbian and that got her all
this clout and recognition and had this profound allure. But
then she realized she's like not exclusively a lesbian, clearly
(22:29):
because she's in a relationship with a man, and that
not what lesbian means. And now you have this example
of this super famous person who went from being a
lesbian to being seemingly heterosexual or maybe at least bisexual.
That's our whole argument was that, well, she clearly must have.
The truth is she must have never really been a
confirmed lesbian. She was just figuring it out still, and
(22:49):
then said that prematurely but unintentionally. I'm sure she didn't
seek to undermine, you know, the validity of lesbians, but
she sent a message to the public that, oh, look,
you can go from being a lesbian to just being
happy with the dating and ending up with a man.
The whole point is that so many lesbians for so
long were told you just haven't found the right man yet.
(23:11):
And that's of course not true for actual lesbians, but
apparently was true for Jojo Siwah.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And the same thing what I was trying to point
out when I was called all those names on TikTok
happened with Demi Levado. I don't know if you remember,
but she came out as non binary and I'm like,
are you though, And now she has distanced herself from
that title. There are people, I am sure that are
(23:39):
actually somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum. But when,
just like you said, when celebrities appropriate a title, I
don't think, especially in the younger generation, they understand with
the appropriation of that title, there comes a certain amount
of responsibility to people who share that title. You don't
want to make the rest of the people look. And
(24:00):
when you say you're a lesbian and then you're in
an affair without a man at a young age, like
you said, it makes it seems like something you can outgrow.
If you're a pop star who says you're non binary
and now you're not, that makes it seem like it's
a phase. It literally turns the entire true LGBT experience
into a joke. And that's what I don't understand when
(24:22):
elder people are trying to say, our lives are not
a joke, our experience is not a joke. Why we're
called phobic for trying to protect people from that, I
don't get it.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You're just gatekeeping. You don't understand. That's the craziest notion
to me, that gatekeeping is bad. No, it's obviously good.
And I can provide an example. I actually don't want
to say this example because it's very explicit, but there's
a group that the gay rights organizers very famously gate
kept out of their movement because of the age of
(24:57):
the people that they were interested.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
In for that great keeping.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
No, that was actually very good gatekeeping.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And that old so funny story about that. Because I
was in New York, New Jersey the year that parade
was happening, again, I was much more active in the community,
and I remember there were two huge parades that were
going on in New York at the time. That was
the main one that that specific group that you were
mentioning tried to be a part of. And you're right.
(25:26):
We all said, oh, hell no, what you're advocating for
is not what we are. And I'm not sure if
they were allowed to march in the secondary march or not,
but I think the secondary march even said no. So yes,
gatekeeping is important because we are still contrary to what
some people think of a vulnerable demographic, so we have
(25:48):
to make sure we gatekeep.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, and the idea that that's like a dirty word
is so strange to me, But I guess I wonder
because you're creating content on TikTok, I'm sure a lot
of the people that watch your videos are on the
younger side, or maybe younger members. I think you call
them queerlets, the young people. Do you notice any shift
(26:11):
in the winds, any change. You've been doing this for
a couple of years now, are some people starting to
get it or not really?
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Still some are. I'm trying to not jump on the
transperson at Disney bandwagon of hate, but when the dust settles,
I will make content saying all of the names you
called me. This is what I was trying to prevent,
(26:38):
This is what I was trying to warn you about.
You need to take a moment to back up and regroup.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I love my.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Trans brothers and sisters, and I want to protect you
from being exploited and having laws created based off of
not the actions of trans people, of the people that
are being cosplaying as trans. The other thing that I
find interesting, And I know this sounds like very nebulous,
because I hate when politicians do this and they don't
(27:06):
name names. But I can't name names. I've had so
many gay and lesbian just run of the mill gay
and lesbian people reach out saying thank you for being
you because they're young, and all they're seeing is the
extreme radical queer. They're not seeing just gay, they're not
(27:28):
seeing just lesbian. And I was having a conversation with
my friends, I think it's all the environment in which
you grew up with because I grew up in a
small town in Florida, and across the street from us
was a gay couple with the son. That was what
was normal to me in the eighties was even gay
people lived together and had a child. My mother had
(27:51):
a friend at work. Her name was Judy and her
partner's name was Cindy, and they were a monogamous couple
and they had a son. This is what was normalized
to me as being gay. You found a life partner,
you had a family together. It was no different than
being straight. And I know that's a dirty word in
the queer community now about heteronormative, but I think a
(28:13):
lot of times people yearn for that, the younger LGBT people,
and they're not seeing it, and they're only seeing the
most vocal, the most outspoken on social media. So a
lot of them are afraid to come out because they
don't want to be associated with that. And I keep
telling them, you're only seeing a very very small, loud
(28:37):
demographic that you will find your niche. It is okay
to come out. If you have questions, you know, feel
free to reach out to me. There's other people in
your community that I guarantee feel the exact same way.
So that's one of the big shifts that I'm seeing.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It's really interesting that you say that, because when I
first started my career, I know, I don't know how
much you follow my other content, but I'm probably in
the enter rite politically. I'm not a far right person.
I'm not a huge Trump supporter or anything like that,
but I, at least traditionally was associated as like a Republican.
(29:11):
I don't even really claim that label now, but I
got a lot of messages when I first started doing
journalism and television, and I was openly gay, wasn't ashamed
about it, wasn't closeted like you know your Republicans would
have been ten twenty years ago. A lot of them
were on the DL and a lot still are, low key,
no ten, no shade. But I could also name so
(29:31):
many names. But I was very open about it, and
I would get like hundreds or probably over the years
even thousands of messages from young gay men or even
young lesbian women who were like, wow, I didn't know
there were really people out there like me, because you know,
they leaned more conservative, they felt really patriotic, they liked
country music or whatever, and what was held up as
(29:54):
the representation of like queer today had just wasn't, not
even in a judge mental way, not saying it's bad,
but just wasn't them culturally, values, political beliefs, ideology, any
of it. And it's so funny because what they'll do,
the kind of progressive dominant thinking in the LGBT community
(30:16):
is I'll talk so much about the need for representation
and diversity, but that doesn't really extend to diversity of
thought very often, because not to say there's no one
who truly is this. I think there are some people,
but if you have any sort of different perspective other
than the popular mainstream one, in like the mainstream LGBT community,
(30:38):
you're just immediately a pick me. You're immediately a grifter,
a sellout, a trader. And I don't I mean, I
think there's some people for whom that label might be appropriate,
but I certainly don't think it's inherent to having different beliefs.
And it's always just struck me as just a really
remarkable inconsistency among this crowd exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
It's it's the group that celebrates diversity, but not diversity
of thought, and if you're if you don't think like them,
they automatically want to exclude you. And I it's such
a weird way to look at a community because I
got into a conversation that I thought was going to
(31:20):
turn into an argument, but I actually turned into a
really productive conversation during one of my lives one time,
where I said, honestly, no offense. The only thing that
you and I have in common is we're both not straight.
Can you imagine any other people being lumped into a
group based off of something so minuscule like that, in
(31:41):
the fact that we all have to think the same way.
For example, I got into a conversation the other day
where someone was saying about the whole, Well, if you
don't support all of us all the time, when they
come for you, they won't. We won't protect you, And
I'm like, queen, please. First of my brother had to
correct me on this because he's like, you were gay
(32:03):
during the Ford administration, the Carter administration, Reagan, because I
went down all the presidents. I'm like, I was gay
during all of this and no one ever came for me.
I appreciate your thought that you think you need to
protect me, but I'm good. Really, the only thing we
have in common is we're both not straight. So I
don't understand why that one minuscule thing makes you think
(32:26):
that we all need to think alike. And I would
never discount the way someone else thinks within the community.
I just don't agree, and I don't know. And this
is a societal thing. It's not just the LGBT community,
and the fact that I can disagree with you and
still like you. I can still just like something vehement
(32:46):
that I can disagree on, I can still like you
as a person. And I don't know why that's become
such an issue in the LGBT community that always claims
that they celebrate diversity, because they don't celebrate diversity.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
No, they celebrate brochure level diversity, right, having a room
full of people that look differently but all kind of
speak and sound the same when it comes to the
actual substance. And to me, that's actually like, I mean,
not just say there's no value in that kind of diversity.
I in particular have benefited a lot from having friends
that are from different parts of the world. And yes,
(33:23):
but it's not really because and they have different cultures.
It's not because you know, they're a different skin color
than me, are different race. It's because they of a
difference in their experience, their life experience, and their culture
that they bring that they've added value. So I think
they put too much emphasis on the surface level of diversity.
Oh well, you need a diverse environment, So you need
to have a person of color, you need to have
(33:45):
you know, a lesbian, you need to have this and
this and that but like oftentimes, you know, this reminds
me of a really funny thing from a few years back,
the Huffington Post. I think it was them, it might
have been some other like liberal news website posts a
picture of around the table all their editors and it
was all women, and they said notice anything, And of
(34:09):
course they were trying to brag about the fact that
they're all women. But of course, by the same argument
that diversity is important, you would be like, well, surely,
if you're covering all of America, some men should be involved,
but not even that. The funniest thing was like, they
were almost all affluent white women from like elite universities,
and so in the surface level, at the most surface level,
(34:32):
this was a diverse group and they were like breaking boundaries.
But in reality, there wasn't a whole lot of diversity
in that room in any meaningful sense. And I think
that's what we've gotten away from I don't agree with
the people who see like are anti diversity, or think
or just neutral on diversity and see no value in diversity.
I like living in a diverse society with all sorts
(34:53):
of cultures and people and food and languages, and I
disagree with the people I see on X saying I
don't want to hear someone speaking Spanish around me. I'm like, no,
that's fine, right, I mean they should they should also
learn English. That's not an offensive thing to say if
they're going to be in America. But I'm not. I
like living in a pluralistic and diverse society, but we
(35:14):
can't just do that on the most service of levels.
And that's what I think the whole diversity movement has
become closely associated with in people's minds. So some of
them just rip up the book and say, Okay, well
screw this whole diversity thing, which I don't fully agree with.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Even even then, there was like, I don't know if
you notice the trend, and they were making fun of them.
And I forget his name. He was the actor on
Modern Family, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and I think he had
taken a picture at Thanksgiving and it was his friends
giving and it was mostly gay, white males, and it
(35:53):
started this whole trend. When gay males take a picture,
they all kind of look the same. And I get
the point, and I've made a TikTok about this, got
some traction. I'm like, I get your point, but are
you telling me that I need to go out and
seek people's friendship based on their skin color? Because people
make friendships based off of common experiences, and sometimes, unfortunately,
(36:18):
we're still kind of segregated in some of our experiences.
And one of the things that I pointed out is
my two bestest friends in the whole world. If you
look at us, we all have the same skin color,
but one is from Mexico, like Mexican Mexican, not Mexican American.
He is from Mexico, and the other one is from Syria.
So superficially, it's yeah, we look the same, we have
(36:41):
the skined skin color. But how dare you say my
friend group is homogenized because ones from Syria the other
ones from Mexico. That's a pretty diverse group to me.
And it's offensive to tell people you need to choose
friends based off of skin color to make your holiday
photo look like the United colors of Benetton. It doesn't
(37:03):
make sense to me. I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
No, you're actually putting it very well, and that's a
really funny story. I do absolutely agree. I mean, I
would encounter this idea sometimes in my college days. I
went to one of these ultra woke colleges and they
would say, well, like, you're a white male, so you're privileged.
I And then you know, I'm a POC, so I'm marginalized.
(37:25):
Somebody would say that to me in classroom, and so
I'm like, well, there's a couple problems here. One, that's
not an argument. It doesn't mean you're right, Like, it
doesn't make you more or less correct in the thing
you're saying. Two, you're kind of making a lot of
assumptions here, right, that it may be true in the
absolute aggregate that like, white males have it easier than
(37:46):
women of color in some statistical or society wide sense.
Let's even like postulate that, like say, yes, that's true
for the purpose of argument. That doesn't tell you anything
about me as an individual, or the fact that I
was like abused as a teenager, or had serious mental
health struggles, or all these other things about me that
actually kind of make the notion that I've had some
(38:08):
privileged life laughable. But you just saw me, saw a
white man, and assumed privilege. And yet somehow we're supposed
to believe that that's a worldview that is like progressive.
I actually think it's like very reductive and flattening and
one dimensional.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
One of the things that me and one of my
friends have talked about, because again it may not look
like I have a diverse group of friends, but I do,
is the word privilege. Every culture says, well, in our culture,
this word means this, and I have repeatedly told this.
I grew up extremely poor white in Florida. Privilege to
(38:48):
us meant rich. So a lot of Caucasian impoverished people
the word privilege meant rich. So when you tell them
that they have privilege, they immediately shut down because they're like,
you don't know anything about me. I grew up very,
very poor. Will most Caucasian people agree that in American
(39:09):
society that their skin color often gives them an advantage.
Most of them would buy into that. So some of
the things we've said, well, why do we use the
word privilege instead of advantage, because I think you would
get more buy in and people would be more cognizant
of different people have different advantages in life based off
of certain things rather than privilege. Because if you want
(39:30):
me to acknowledge a word means something to you, you
have to acknowledge the other person that this word means
this to me. So that's I bet I get your point. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
No, And it's interesting with the diversity thing as well,
Like you're talking about the friend group. This conversation came
up about a trend that I don't even want to
get into. But I had the thought that, like, in
my day to day life, I don't have any black friends,
and I was like, is that weird? But then I
reminded myself, I live in Michigan. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(40:05):
Ninety five percent of the people around me in life
are not black, and I don't have very many friends.
I'm an introvert, so like, it's not that I'm not
open to being friends with a black person. I have
had close friends who are black in kind of other
life stages. But I was like, is that weird that
(40:25):
I don't And I had that little thought inside my
head and I was I had to realize, like, no,
it's not that's. I encountered the same thing with diversity
statistics at the University of Massachusetts. They would be like,
this school is fifty five percent white, and they would
say that, like UMass has a lot of work to
(40:45):
do on the diversity count. And I'm like, but bro, Like,
Massachusetts is like seventy percent white, So if anything, we're
like already doing more diversity than what would just be expected.
But they don't even consider that context sometimes.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And it's to me, it's one of those things you
can't win for losing, because again I come from the
generation because I'm older, that we were told we're not
supposed to acknowledge someone's skin color, treat everybody equally, And
then we move into this you have to acknowledge someone's
skin color because their skin color, it gives you a
clue to their culture and to their upbringing. But then
(41:22):
they forget that you have affluent people of all different
skin colors. So now you're asking me to make an
assumption based off of a simple observation of someone's skin color.
So it's like, where do we where we Where am
I supposed to go? I'll do what you tell me
to do, just what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Well, you keep trying to keep up with the times
but pushing back on people and trying to restore some sanity.
I appreciate your videos and your content. I will try
people if if you enjoyed the conversation. I will link
to Grumpy Old gays TikTok account. Definitely check it out,
and we'll have to chat again soon because I'm sure
we'll have more wild stuff going on in the community
(42:03):
and in the world to talk about. But thanks for
coming on
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Especially by the end of Pride month, it'll be all
over the news.
You can look at the first Pride March.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
So you many puppy masks and leather don daddies were there.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
None, You did not see anything. Of what people are
saying was always part of what about.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
How many black trans women were leading the charge joining
me to talk all things Pride Month. We have Tim
aka the Grumpy Old Gay.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Thanks for having me. It's been a while.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yeah, it's been a while. We chatted before and people
really enjoyed that episode. It got a lot of engagement
in fews. But uh, I wanted to talk to you
again because I saw a TikTok of yours about Pride
Month that I'll insert a little snippet from.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Grumpy Old gayrant of the day. There are LGBT people
all over this app saying, you know what, it is,
Pride Month. But I'm not going to go to any
of the Pride festivals. I am one of them. It's
just not for me. Don't get me wrong. In my
early twenties, I used to go to Pride every year
because it focused on something different.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So for me, I've been a pretty big critic of
Pride Month since kind of my adult political In maybe
twenty nineteen, I went to a couple At the very beginning,
I pretty soon couldn't really go to any because I
was kind of persona on grata in the DC gay community.
But I hated how hyper sexualized they were, Like I'm
(01:14):
not really a kink shamer or anything like that, but
I didn't appreciate it being conflated with just being gay
and being such a big part of it all, and
especially given that there were kids at a lot of
the events. And then I really resented the extent to
which Pride at these official parades was just lumped in
with a bunch of other random left wing causes like
(01:35):
climate change, abortion, guns, and whatever your opinion is on
all of those. I think, Okay, we can have a conversation.
I respect the difference of opinion, but don't conflate being
gay with just like a whole democratic agenda, or you're
going to make it something politicized and partisan. But what
I'm really curious is it sounds like you've observed a
(01:56):
big change in what Pride month and what Pride events
look like over time. Tell us what did it used
to be?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Like? Okay, so my first call you old no, no, no.
I embraced my age. I'm looking forward. I turned fifty
this year to be a golden gay, so I'm embracing
my age. My first pride I will never forget. I
call him my fairy god Homo. He I met when
I was in college. She was one of my pharmacy patients.
(02:23):
He had full blown AIDS. He and his partner both
had AIDS. And I was looking to get into graduate
school and they got me involved in something called the
West Palm Beach Comprehensive AIDS Project. So I was looking
for volunteer hours and I worked in the pantry volunteering
for AIDS patients, and they took me to my first
pride because I was working the booth. And back then
(02:48):
it was different. It was political, but we were fighting
for something that I think that were kind of lost
track of or sight of. Back then, we were fighting
or our best friend's lives. I was fighting for my
best friend's life. I mean, he had no t cells.
He was dying. I was watching my best friend die
(03:08):
in front of me. So we were fighting for something
different than we were fighting to make sure we didn't
get fired from our jobs because of who we were.
We didn't really have any federal protections when it came
to the workplace, and it was more of bringing awareness
to the people that you know, just so happened to
(03:29):
be gay. It wasn't like an identity back then. And
I was very very active in the gay community in
Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in Orlando, even in
Colorado when I was going to college there, and then
when I don't know, I want to say, in the
last ten twelve years, I saw a shift in what
(03:52):
was happening in pride, and I wasn't exactly proud of
what I was seeing. I'm like you, I'm not shaming
any buddy, I just didn't feel comfortable. Like you said,
I saw kids coming to pride, and in small town
pride events like Fort Collins, Colorado, where we had Pride,
it was more of just a celebration of everybody. You
(04:15):
didn't have to be gay, you didn't have to be
trans or anything like that. It was family friendly. But
in the bigger cities it does seem like there was
a shift more to sexualize things, and as an educator,
I didn't feel comfortable in that environment having kids around it.
And I don't understand why that shift occurred. And I
get a lot of pushback from people because I'm not
(04:37):
a gay historian. I like to read. I've always wondered
things and I investigated on my own, and a common
response I was constantly getting was it's always been this way,
and I'm like, has it because I don't remember it
this way? No, So I didn't know that. You can
look at the first Pride March, which was the Christopher
(04:58):
Street Gay Liberal March in June of nineteen seventy. The
entire march used to be available on YouTube, so you
can puppy.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Masks and leather dom daddies were there.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
None, You did not see anything of what people are
saying was always part.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Of what about how many black trans women were leading
the charge?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
That's the weird thing. Marcia P. Johnson was there and
they've romanticized her, and I have nothing against the woman,
but it was another thing when it comes to Pride.
I was always told I have to thank Marsha P. Johnson,
and I'm like, okay, cool, what did she do? I
want to learn? So the more I read about her,
and the more people would tell me, I'm like, that's great,
(05:42):
she was an activist, but what did she do? And
they're like, what you were.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
The first brick. They said it a bunch of times,
so it must be true. Tim.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
They even made a shirt, and I'm just like.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Wow, it's not historically true, like she showed up after
it had started. And I guess even whether Marsha P.
Johnson counts as a tree black trans woman is somewhat
dubious because that term didn't really exist. Marcia was a
drag queen. But say that, say you accept that framing
that Marsha was a trans woman. Okay, it's one person
(06:12):
who was somewhat involved in the events of Stonewall. But
this like mythological rewriting of things where Stonewall was started
and led by black trans women of color, is just
like ingrained in a certain segment of the population's consciousness,
but isn't true. And I don't know how that.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Happened because this is my own. First of all, I
don't hate anyone. I'm not a bigot, but I do
like to understand the whole picture and hear the whole story.
And I think, because I will admit as a white
gay cisnle that black, brown trans people have been marginalized
(06:57):
in our group. And I think that they chose her
as a messiah to help say. I think it was
to more include people that were being either disenfranchised or
just being excluded from the group, and in an effort
to include them, they made her the figurehead to say, well,
(07:18):
you owe everything to this. And I have nothing against
Marsha P. Johnson, But when I ask people that shove
that down my throat, I'm like, well, what about Stormy?
And they're like who? And I go, oh, you don't
know who Stormy LeVar. I never can say her last name, right, Laverier.
They don't even know who that is. And I'm like, okay,
(07:39):
and what about Raymond Castro? Who's that? I'm like, these
were the people that were actually in Stonewall during the raid.
These are the people. Stormy is the one who yelled
to the crowd when she was getting pulled out. Why
are you letting them do this? That sense chills down
my spine every time I tell that story, because she's
the one who really kicked it off, and she is
(08:02):
a woman of color, she is gender non conforming. You're
completely you want to talk about misogyny, you're completely discounting
the actual person that kind of started the Stonewall movement
and you're also being disrespectful to every advocate or activist.
Is the word I'm looking for that came before them,
(08:23):
the Black Cat, Tavern riot, the Patch Bar. All of
these people were so brave in what they did, saying
we're not going to take this anymore. You're not going
to marginalize this. We're just people, and just to discount
everything in front of them and to put everything into
Marsha P. Johnson in the name of inclusivity. I want
(08:44):
everybody to be included.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Not at the expense of truth. I shouldn't have to
come at the expense of truth. But I derailed you
a little bit. And I want to talk more about this,
about how you've seen pride change over time, over the decades,
in recent years, how has it changed, Because my window
into it is not even a decade long, so I
haven't seen it change a whole lot. I think I've
only known kind of the modern iteration. In my personal experience, we.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Will say smaller town pride I enjoyed immensely because it
was more about community and it was more about gay
owned businesses. LGBT owned businesses would come and have booths,
and again we were watching our friends die we knew
that we were being discriminated against, and the purpose was
(09:29):
to show which as horrible as this sounds, because when
you say this, now you're called to pick me. You
were supposed to just be there to say, hey, I'm
just like you. I just so happened to be gay.
And then it is transitioned into something that is I
am gay, pay attention to me, or I am trans
pay attention to me, and it got hijacked from what
(09:49):
the original purpose was in my opinion, and I just.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
I mean, it's funny that you say they'll call that
like pick me or whatever, but that's kind of the
point of activism actually is to get society to like
you and agree with you. I mean, we live in
a democratic society where you have to convince the public
to if you want rights for your group, well you
have to convince a majority of people that your group
(10:14):
deserves rights. And so they're like, well, that's just respectability politics,
and I'm like, yes, it is, Yeah, that is my point. Correct,
you're finally getting it. But they act like that's some
kind of dirty word, as if they have the right.
And maybe they have this right, but it's just not
realistic to be as transgressive as imaginable, do as much
(10:34):
as they can to do things or present themselves in
ways that are distasteful to the public. But then the
public still has to accept them and give them, grant
them every right that they want in society. It's just
not like going to happen. Maybe you should say, you know, well,
people's basic rights shouldn't be a popularity contest. I agree,
but like welcome to democracy, I don't know what more
(10:56):
to tell them.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
The other thing, though, because we have two different demographics,
I feel like that are pulling Pride away from what
it used to be. One is the overt sexualization of everything.
And you still have the right to do those things
in the privacy of your own home. And that's what
(11:17):
I think people forget. For some reason, common sense and
morality or lack thereof, just seems to go out the
window when it comes to a Pride celebration. You would
not allow that in a July fourth parade. You would
not allow that in any a Saint Patrick's parade. It's
as drunken as that is. You wouldn't tolerate that. So
(11:38):
what is it about Pride where you feel the need
to do those things in public. I have friends that
are in that community and they talk about folsom Street,
and I always say, even that, I understand that it's
more guarded, but what you do in the privacy of
(11:59):
your their own home, that's what the original fight was,
I thought was.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Or even in a public setting, that's just not conflated
with LGBT. So, like, one of the criticisms that I
made in years past was in DC they had a
massive LGBT kink and leather conference, and I'm like, why
can't you just have a kink and leather conference and
have straight and heterosexual people there. Why do you have
(12:26):
to make this a gay thing when the whole point
is that being gay is not a kink, it's not
a preference, and it's not you know, something actually that's
deviant or outside the norm in terms of beyond the
pale in society. I just feel it's very counterproductive to
conflate that with these kinds of things that really have
nothing to do with sexuality. But I think they want
(12:47):
to conflate it because they want, like I don't know,
recognition or support for their kinks and stuff. They're not
content to just keep it private. I'm not sure why
maybe it's part of it, and so they're trying to
hijack the broad acceptance that gay rights has enjoyed until
maybe it still mostly is, but until recently we've seen
it start to slip a little bit in the polling
and stuff. And I'm like, but no, you don't seem
(13:09):
to realize you're not going to capitalize on that increase
in support. You're going to drag it down with you.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
We don't want that, don't I agree? And the thing is,
I honestly, and this is where I'm hoping that we
don't get you in trouble on YouTube. I don't understand
this need people have to be oppressed. It's like they're
they're looking for a reason, and they're creating reasons for
(13:36):
people to discriminate against them or oppress them in some way,
shape or form. And you doing overtly sexual things in
public in the name of pride, and then when people
call you out then you're like, oh, I'm playing the victim.
I'm like, you're not the victim. You were the catalyst
(13:58):
for this. And I hate the fact that it seems
like we were on this great trajectory where everybody knew
someone who was LGBT, and everybody was supportive in the
fact that they were like, it's your life. Even my
family members they're from Florida, they're a Republican. They were like,
we support you because you were you. But we're losing
(14:21):
that support because we're getting hijacked. I mean, quite frankly,
the movement has been hijacked and we're going off into
a path where the name of inclusivity now you are
excluded if you are not falling in line with the
rest of the I'm sorry to call it. It seems
like a cult.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And what about the second group? Because you talked about
the kink and the sexual stuff. What's the second group
you identified that's changed how pride is okay?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
So it is to me the well meaning but slightly
off kilter people that are claiming that trans or non
binary who are not actually trans a non binary. I
got so much hate a year ago from a TikTok
I made where I was not making fun of trans people,
(15:13):
I was not making fun of non binary people. I
was making fun of straight heterosexual couples that are claiming
that they are queer or non binary in an effort
to I don't know, seem oppressed or seem included, or
seem edgy, I don't know, and that TikTok got so
taken out of context. I was called phobe, and I'm like,
(15:35):
I'm not phobic. You missed the point. I wasn't making
fun of trans people. I wasn't making fun of non binary.
I was making fun of boring, middle class, white straight
people who are literally just for some reason, I can
be non binary. And I tried to warn, and I'm
kind of sarcastic, and I tried to warn. I said,
(15:56):
the trans community has always been the most fragile member
of members of our community. And I was accused of gatekeeping,
and I said, dear head, damn right, I'm gatekeeping because
there has to be a level of gatekeeping it. Do
not gatekeep it. People will want to do bad things
and use that title to do bad things. And we've
(16:16):
seen it all over TikTok. That person is famous. They
were just at Disney World and they are literally pulling
down the trans community further than what they were and
they've never been that high anyway. They were starting to
gain momentum, but then you have these people that in
my mind are just cost playing or experimenting with gender
(16:37):
and that's fine, but you don't need to appropriate the
label as you're trying to find who your true self is,
and it's coming at a detriment to our most fragile,
vulnerable population. But I was the bigot for calling that out.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
I was like, no, you're not, and they just throw
that around like Candia Halloween, which is one of the
reasons it's lost its power. And unfortunately, I think you
are seeing a genuine rye and bigotry and nastiness towards
trans people that I don't support.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
But part of the.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Reason is because they've stretched it so like if trans
doesn't mean anything, if there's no medical basis for it, right,
because there always have been a tiny percent of people
who have severe gender dysphoria, for whom the best thing
for them in life is to transition, and I've always
been supportive of that, though I think they should wait
till they're adults or near the age of adulthood to
make irreversible changes. But the problem is that you have
(17:27):
people claiming that, well, I'm trans non binary, I don't
actually have to do anything. It's just how I feel inside,
and it's valid in my truth I'm sorry, but that's
like not a real thing. There's no scientific basis for that.
Nobody's going to take it seriously. It's not really credible.
It's just kind of like, in my view, almost the
new goth. These people are conflating their gender for just
(17:48):
like their personality or their style or something. And I'm
sure they don't realize they're doing it, but they're almost
delegitimizing the idea of a trans person and them having genderice.
For you in, the thing that makes that worthy of
respect is actually the medical basis of it, because it's
not just something people wake up one day and choose.
It's something they struggle with for years and will cause
(18:10):
them intense, intense distress if they don't transition in some cases.
And when you're conflating that with the fact that, like
you want a nosering and a somewhat gender ambiguous haircut,
it's just it's not the same. And what you're doing
is you're watering down the category and you're stripping it
of the seriousness with which people used to treat it.
(18:31):
And by then and then you're trying to demand that
same level of respecting credibility for something that's frankly, like
not particularly credible or serious. A lot of this oh
my gender is cupcake slash cupcakes self or whatever. Some
of it's attention speaking, it's just the truth. In the
era of TikTok and Instagram and all this, we've made
(18:52):
attention a form of social currency, and we've really valorized victimhood.
We've made this kind of a thing where it's like, well,
how interesting are you? Well, how many groups do you
belong to? How many marginalized identities? And so of course
then you're incentivizing the boring heterosexual white girl to actually
(19:12):
declare herself gender queer and get a nose stud and
now she's dating a man, but it's a queer relationship.
But the byproduct of that, or the end product of
that is then people think it's all a joke, because like,
if it can mean nothing for that person, then doesn't
mean anything for these other people. So there is real harm.
It's not harmless, is I guess what I'm.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Sayings An, I was doing a TikTok live because I
was bored the other day. I rarely go live, and
one of the things someone had brought up was what
were my thoughts on you know, transitioning minors and things
like that, and as someone who has been in education forever,
I can't say what I want to say because I'm
(19:52):
afraid of getting fired, but I'm not at work. Not
everything needs a label, And that's the thing I wish
the younger kids would understand is not everything needs a label.
Everybody goes through in adolescents, even my early twenties, you're
still trying to find out who you are. And I
sit on the fence on this because sometimes I feel
(20:14):
like there's a power in label, like identifying I am gay.
I finally know who I am. But on the other hand,
when you're too busy just grabbing it labels, it has
a detrimental impact. For example, no shade to this person,
Jojo Siwa, she made.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Her entire personal shade a little bit of shade for
me at least, no.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Entire personality about being a lesbian. Mazzle tough, you're a lesbian.
But then now she's completely open about being in this
relationship with a man now, And the first part of
me is like, why why does it matter? I mean, like,
whether you want to be with a man, whether you
want to be with a woman, be who with you
want to be. But the issue is when you're a
public figure like that, or you're popular on social media
(21:02):
and you make a switch like that, it does make
it seem like it's a phase. And as someone who
lived through that experience where my parents made me go
to a therapist and stuff when I came out because
they thought it was a phase, it's insulting for those
of us that lived through it. And I'm not trying
to take away from the younger generation. I'm not trying
to be a bigot. I'm not trying to be phobic.
(21:24):
I'm saying that someone who had to live through Are
you sure it's not a phase? Are you sure it's
not a phase? You're actually reinforcing a common belief when
it comes to the LGBT community that it's a phase
that you'll grow out of. And that's where I have issue.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
That's the exact point that I was thinking about with this,
because the whole point is not that there's anything wrong
with Jojo Siwah having some sort of journey she's on
where she might at first think she's a lesbian and
then realize, actually, maybe I'm bisexual or maybe I'm heterosexual,
and she ends up dating a man. Absolutely, there's nothing
wrong with that. We've all been into you know, young
(22:02):
and I never really had that struggle, but so be it.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
The problem is that, for whatever reason, our celebrity culture,
our social media culture, so incentivizes and celebrates people for
adopting labels and identities. That she was like urged to
come out as a lesbian and that got her all
this clout and recognition and had this profound allure. But
then she realized she's like not exclusively a lesbian, clearly
(22:29):
because she's in a relationship with a man, and that
not what lesbian means. And now you have this example
of this super famous person who went from being a
lesbian to being seemingly heterosexual or maybe at least bisexual.
That's our whole argument was that, well, she clearly must have.
The truth is she must have never really been a
confirmed lesbian. She was just figuring it out still, and
(22:49):
then said that prematurely but unintentionally. I'm sure she didn't
seek to undermine, you know, the validity of lesbians, but
she sent a message to the public that, oh, look,
you can go from being a lesbian to just being
happy with the dating and ending up with a man.
The whole point is that so many lesbians for so
long were told you just haven't found the right man yet.
(23:11):
And that's of course not true for actual lesbians, but
apparently was true for Jojo Siwah.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And the same thing what I was trying to point
out when I was called all those names on TikTok
happened with Demi Levado. I don't know if you remember,
but she came out as non binary and I'm like,
are you though, And now she has distanced herself from
that title. There are people, I am sure that are
(23:39):
actually somewhere in the middle of the gender spectrum. But when,
just like you said, when celebrities appropriate a title, I
don't think, especially in the younger generation, they understand with
the appropriation of that title, there comes a certain amount
of responsibility to people who share that title. You don't
want to make the rest of the people look. And
(24:00):
when you say you're a lesbian and then you're in
an affair without a man at a young age, like
you said, it makes it seems like something you can outgrow.
If you're a pop star who says you're non binary
and now you're not, that makes it seem like it's
a phase. It literally turns the entire true LGBT experience
into a joke. And that's what I don't understand when
(24:22):
elder people are trying to say, our lives are not
a joke, our experience is not a joke. Why we're
called phobic for trying to protect people from that, I
don't get it.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
You're just gatekeeping. You don't understand. That's the craziest notion
to me, that gatekeeping is bad. No, it's obviously good.
And I can provide an example. I actually don't want
to say this example because it's very explicit, but there's
a group that the gay rights organizers very famously gate
kept out of their movement because of the age of
(24:57):
the people that they were interested.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
In for that great keeping.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
No, that was actually very good gatekeeping.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
And that old so funny story about that. Because I
was in New York, New Jersey the year that parade
was happening, again, I was much more active in the community,
and I remember there were two huge parades that were
going on in New York at the time. That was
the main one that that specific group that you were
mentioning tried to be a part of. And you're right.
(25:26):
We all said, oh, hell no, what you're advocating for
is not what we are. And I'm not sure if
they were allowed to march in the secondary march or not,
but I think the secondary march even said no. So yes,
gatekeeping is important because we are still contrary to what
some people think of a vulnerable demographic, so we have
(25:48):
to make sure we gatekeep.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, and the idea that that's like a dirty word
is so strange to me, But I guess I wonder
because you're creating content on TikTok, I'm sure a lot
of the people that watch your videos are on the
younger side, or maybe younger members. I think you call
them queerlets, the young people. Do you notice any shift
(26:11):
in the winds, any change. You've been doing this for
a couple of years now, are some people starting to
get it or not really?
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Still some are. I'm trying to not jump on the
transperson at Disney bandwagon of hate, but when the dust settles,
I will make content saying all of the names you
called me. This is what I was trying to prevent,
(26:38):
This is what I was trying to warn you about.
You need to take a moment to back up and regroup.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
I love my.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Trans brothers and sisters, and I want to protect you
from being exploited and having laws created based off of
not the actions of trans people, of the people that
are being cosplaying as trans. The other thing that I
find interesting, And I know this sounds like very nebulous,
because I hate when politicians do this and they don't
(27:06):
name names. But I can't name names. I've had so
many gay and lesbian just run of the mill gay
and lesbian people reach out saying thank you for being
you because they're young, and all they're seeing is the
extreme radical queer. They're not seeing just gay, they're not
(27:28):
seeing just lesbian. And I was having a conversation with
my friends, I think it's all the environment in which
you grew up with because I grew up in a
small town in Florida, and across the street from us
was a gay couple with the son. That was what
was normal to me in the eighties was even gay
people lived together and had a child. My mother had
(27:51):
a friend at work. Her name was Judy and her
partner's name was Cindy, and they were a monogamous couple
and they had a son. This is what was normalized
to me as being gay. You found a life partner,
you had a family together. It was no different than
being straight. And I know that's a dirty word in
the queer community now about heteronormative, but I think a
(28:13):
lot of times people yearn for that, the younger LGBT people,
and they're not seeing it, and they're only seeing the
most vocal, the most outspoken on social media. So a
lot of them are afraid to come out because they
don't want to be associated with that. And I keep
telling them, you're only seeing a very very small, loud
(28:37):
demographic that you will find your niche. It is okay
to come out. If you have questions, you know, feel
free to reach out to me. There's other people in
your community that I guarantee feel the exact same way.
So that's one of the big shifts that I'm seeing.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It's really interesting that you say that, because when I
first started my career, I know, I don't know how
much you follow my other content, but I'm probably in
the enter rite politically. I'm not a far right person.
I'm not a huge Trump supporter or anything like that,
but I, at least traditionally was associated as like a Republican.
(29:11):
I don't even really claim that label now, but I
got a lot of messages when I first started doing
journalism and television, and I was openly gay, wasn't ashamed
about it, wasn't closeted like you know your Republicans would
have been ten twenty years ago. A lot of them
were on the DL and a lot still are, low key,
no ten, no shade. But I could also name so
(29:31):
many names. But I was very open about it, and
I would get like hundreds or probably over the years
even thousands of messages from young gay men or even
young lesbian women who were like, wow, I didn't know
there were really people out there like me, because you know,
they leaned more conservative, they felt really patriotic, they liked
country music or whatever, and what was held up as
(29:54):
the representation of like queer today had just wasn't, not
even in a judge mental way, not saying it's bad,
but just wasn't them culturally, values, political beliefs, ideology, any
of it. And it's so funny because what they'll do,
the kind of progressive dominant thinking in the LGBT community
(30:16):
is I'll talk so much about the need for representation
and diversity, but that doesn't really extend to diversity of
thought very often, because not to say there's no one
who truly is this. I think there are some people,
but if you have any sort of different perspective other
than the popular mainstream one, in like the mainstream LGBT community,
(30:38):
you're just immediately a pick me. You're immediately a grifter,
a sellout, a trader. And I don't I mean, I
think there's some people for whom that label might be appropriate,
but I certainly don't think it's inherent to having different beliefs.
And it's always just struck me as just a really
remarkable inconsistency among this crowd exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
It's it's the group that celebrates diversity, but not diversity
of thought, and if you're if you don't think like them,
they automatically want to exclude you. And I it's such
a weird way to look at a community because I
got into a conversation that I thought was going to
(31:20):
turn into an argument, but I actually turned into a
really productive conversation during one of my lives one time,
where I said, honestly, no offense. The only thing that
you and I have in common is we're both not straight.
Can you imagine any other people being lumped into a
group based off of something so minuscule like that, in
(31:41):
the fact that we all have to think the same way.
For example, I got into a conversation the other day
where someone was saying about the whole, Well, if you
don't support all of us all the time, when they
come for you, they won't. We won't protect you, And
I'm like, queen, please. First of my brother had to
correct me on this because he's like, you were gay
(32:03):
during the Ford administration, the Carter administration, Reagan, because I
went down all the presidents. I'm like, I was gay
during all of this and no one ever came for me.
I appreciate your thought that you think you need to
protect me, but I'm good. Really, the only thing we
have in common is we're both not straight. So I
don't understand why that one minuscule thing makes you think
(32:26):
that we all need to think alike. And I would
never discount the way someone else thinks within the community.
I just don't agree, and I don't know. And this
is a societal thing. It's not just the LGBT community,
and the fact that I can disagree with you and
still like you. I can still just like something vehement
(32:46):
that I can disagree on, I can still like you
as a person. And I don't know why that's become
such an issue in the LGBT community that always claims
that they celebrate diversity, because they don't celebrate diversity.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
No, they celebrate brochure level diversity, right, having a room
full of people that look differently but all kind of
speak and sound the same when it comes to the
actual substance. And to me, that's actually like, I mean,
not just say there's no value in that kind of diversity.
I in particular have benefited a lot from having friends
that are from different parts of the world. And yes,
(33:23):
but it's not really because and they have different cultures.
It's not because you know, they're a different skin color
than me, are different race. It's because they of a
difference in their experience, their life experience, and their culture
that they bring that they've added value. So I think
they put too much emphasis on the surface level of diversity.
Oh well, you need a diverse environment, So you need
to have a person of color, you need to have
(33:45):
you know, a lesbian, you need to have this and
this and that but like oftentimes, you know, this reminds
me of a really funny thing from a few years back,
the Huffington Post. I think it was them, it might
have been some other like liberal news website posts a
picture of around the table all their editors and it
was all women, and they said notice anything, And of
(34:09):
course they were trying to brag about the fact that
they're all women. But of course, by the same argument
that diversity is important, you would be like, well, surely,
if you're covering all of America, some men should be involved,
but not even that. The funniest thing was like, they
were almost all affluent white women from like elite universities,
and so in the surface level, at the most surface level,
(34:32):
this was a diverse group and they were like breaking boundaries.
But in reality, there wasn't a whole lot of diversity
in that room in any meaningful sense. And I think
that's what we've gotten away from I don't agree with
the people who see like are anti diversity, or think
or just neutral on diversity and see no value in diversity.
I like living in a diverse society with all sorts
(34:53):
of cultures and people and food and languages, and I
disagree with the people I see on X saying I
don't want to hear someone speaking Spanish around me. I'm like, no,
that's fine, right, I mean they should they should also
learn English. That's not an offensive thing to say if
they're going to be in America. But I'm not. I
like living in a pluralistic and diverse society, but we
(35:14):
can't just do that on the most service of levels.
And that's what I think the whole diversity movement has
become closely associated with in people's minds. So some of
them just rip up the book and say, Okay, well
screw this whole diversity thing, which I don't fully agree with.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Even even then, there was like, I don't know if
you notice the trend, and they were making fun of them.
And I forget his name. He was the actor on
Modern Family, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and I think he had
taken a picture at Thanksgiving and it was his friends
giving and it was mostly gay, white males, and it
(35:53):
started this whole trend. When gay males take a picture,
they all kind of look the same. And I get
the point, and I've made a TikTok about this, got
some traction. I'm like, I get your point, but are
you telling me that I need to go out and
seek people's friendship based on their skin color? Because people
make friendships based off of common experiences, and sometimes, unfortunately,
(36:18):
we're still kind of segregated in some of our experiences.
And one of the things that I pointed out is
my two bestest friends in the whole world. If you
look at us, we all have the same skin color,
but one is from Mexico, like Mexican Mexican, not Mexican American.
He is from Mexico, and the other one is from Syria.
So superficially, it's yeah, we look the same, we have
(36:41):
the skined skin color. But how dare you say my
friend group is homogenized because ones from Syria the other
ones from Mexico. That's a pretty diverse group to me.
And it's offensive to tell people you need to choose
friends based off of skin color to make your holiday
photo look like the United colors of Benetton. It doesn't
(37:03):
make sense to me. I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
No, you're actually putting it very well, and that's a
really funny story. I do absolutely agree. I mean, I
would encounter this idea sometimes in my college days. I
went to one of these ultra woke colleges and they
would say, well, like, you're a white male, so you're privileged.
I And then you know, I'm a POC, so I'm marginalized.
(37:25):
Somebody would say that to me in classroom, and so
I'm like, well, there's a couple problems here. One, that's
not an argument. It doesn't mean you're right, Like, it
doesn't make you more or less correct in the thing
you're saying. Two, you're kind of making a lot of
assumptions here, right, that it may be true in the
absolute aggregate that like, white males have it easier than
(37:46):
women of color in some statistical or society wide sense.
Let's even like postulate that, like say, yes, that's true
for the purpose of argument. That doesn't tell you anything
about me as an individual, or the fact that I
was like abused as a teenager, or had serious mental
health struggles, or all these other things about me that
actually kind of make the notion that I've had some
(38:08):
privileged life laughable. But you just saw me, saw a
white man, and assumed privilege. And yet somehow we're supposed
to believe that that's a worldview that is like progressive.
I actually think it's like very reductive and flattening and
one dimensional.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
One of the things that me and one of my
friends have talked about, because again it may not look
like I have a diverse group of friends, but I do,
is the word privilege. Every culture says, well, in our culture,
this word means this, and I have repeatedly told this.
I grew up extremely poor white in Florida. Privilege to
(38:48):
us meant rich. So a lot of Caucasian impoverished people
the word privilege meant rich. So when you tell them
that they have privilege, they immediately shut down because they're like,
you don't know anything about me. I grew up very,
very poor. Will most Caucasian people agree that in American
(39:09):
society that their skin color often gives them an advantage.
Most of them would buy into that. So some of
the things we've said, well, why do we use the
word privilege instead of advantage, because I think you would
get more buy in and people would be more cognizant
of different people have different advantages in life based off
of certain things rather than privilege. Because if you want
(39:30):
me to acknowledge a word means something to you, you
have to acknowledge the other person that this word means
this to me. So that's I bet I get your point. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
No, And it's interesting with the diversity thing as well,
Like you're talking about the friend group. This conversation came
up about a trend that I don't even want to
get into. But I had the thought that, like, in
my day to day life, I don't have any black friends,
and I was like, is that weird? But then I
reminded myself, I live in Michigan. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(40:05):
Ninety five percent of the people around me in life
are not black, and I don't have very many friends.
I'm an introvert, so like, it's not that I'm not
open to being friends with a black person. I have
had close friends who are black in kind of other
life stages. But I was like, is that weird that
(40:25):
I don't And I had that little thought inside my
head and I was I had to realize, like, no,
it's not that's. I encountered the same thing with diversity
statistics at the University of Massachusetts. They would be like,
this school is fifty five percent white, and they would
say that, like UMass has a lot of work to
(40:45):
do on the diversity count. And I'm like, but bro, Like,
Massachusetts is like seventy percent white, So if anything, we're
like already doing more diversity than what would just be expected.
But they don't even consider that context sometimes.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
And it's to me, it's one of those things you
can't win for losing, because again I come from the
generation because I'm older, that we were told we're not
supposed to acknowledge someone's skin color, treat everybody equally, And
then we move into this you have to acknowledge someone's
skin color because their skin color, it gives you a
clue to their culture and to their upbringing. But then
(41:22):
they forget that you have affluent people of all different
skin colors. So now you're asking me to make an
assumption based off of a simple observation of someone's skin color.
So it's like, where do we where we Where am
I supposed to go? I'll do what you tell me
to do, just what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Well, you keep trying to keep up with the times
but pushing back on people and trying to restore some sanity.
I appreciate your videos and your content. I will try
people if if you enjoyed the conversation. I will link
to Grumpy Old gays TikTok account. Definitely check it out,
and we'll have to chat again soon because I'm sure
we'll have more wild stuff going on in the community
(42:03):
and in the world to talk about. But thanks for
coming on
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Especially by the end of Pride month, it'll be all
over the news.
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